Jaycee Woods

I have noticed some reoccurring events across my draft stories as I edit them. One is a man offering a woman an apple.

Looking at these recently, it seems like a riff on the woman choosing between a man or bear in the wilderness meme by having her choose to accept an apple from a man instead of a serpent.

In context these instances are a man offering the apple as an element of his offering her forbidden knowledge from reality. So it is a little of a joke about the current year ‘sin’ of mansplaining.

One of the first and the most explicit instances occurred in an experimental story with a supernatural vibe. I wanted to keep the identity of the male lead, who I referred to initially as Spirit, unknown. In the draft, a young girl is homeless on the street when she is approached by this spirit character.

As part of winning her trust, he offers the starving girl an apple from his coat pocket. Through the dialogue, he explicitly makes the connection of Eve & the serpent with him offering her the apple. Further as a demonstration of ‘temptation,’ he asks her whether she would accept the apple and knowledge from him if it were displeasing to God (as a representation of blind obedience to tradition).

That story isn’t a call to a specific action but a call to thought by the reader as that child walks away with that unknown man or thing at the end of the story. In my mind, he is an actual man who ends up caring for and protecting the girl, but I exclude that from the story. Instead the reader is left to independently ponder their own response to an endangered and neglected child as the story ending has an uncertain outcome as to whether the girl was saved or was in more danger. The goal is not an emotional response but one about considering personal action.